RBG: will the GOP Senate do the right thing?

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Since the passing of US Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday, September 18th, at home, at the age of 87, the world has turned upside down. Many issues are on the table.

Her personal life and her impact has already been discussed in ways I can’t begin to address and won’t. What I will do is address her politics and then the politics of “okay, so what next”?

Personally I’m sure she was a good woman — and it’s clear she had numerous challenges in her life, from her multiple bouts with cancer to her husband Marvin passing at the age of 78 back in 2010 of metastatic cancer himself.

That’s the personal aside. Now to politics. And that is this, which apparently no one save me seemed to notice or much care about.

How can an actual sitting Associate Supreme Court Justice eschew the United States Constitution when talking with a foreign power — in this case Egypt — about creating their own constitution?

If she doesn’t recommend our Constitution to anyone else in 2012, how can she be trusted to uphold it when anything comes before her?

Why would that be? I submit: positive vs negative rights.

The US Constitution is crafted in such a way as to tell our government what it can’t do against its citizens.

The rights granted United States citizens come from God, not government.

Our rights are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Nowhere does any document guarantee any outcome whatsoever, nor should it. Opportunity? Of course so. For everyone.

However, it is the responsibility of persons to act, well, responsibly.

The vacancy created? We know that nature abhors a vacuum. And whereas before, Republicans were historically hesitant to wield power when they had it, it appears Mitch McConnell is set to deliver again — in re Merrick Garland.

Of course, that’s when the threats and screaming began.

Senate Minority Leader Chuckie Schumer also started screaming. And the body hadn’t even cooled yet on the 18th.

Schumer: Ruth Bader Ginsburg seat should be filled by next president

by Jordain Carney, 9-18-20

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday night that the Senate should wait until next year to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg‘s death.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” Schumer said in a tweet.

Schumer’s tweet comes less than an hour after news broke that Ginsburg had died Friday at 87, throwing a landmine into an already chaotic presidential election year.

Schumer’s tweet is a word-for-word copy of a statement Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) released in 2016 after the election-year death of the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

It also points to the looming battle over whether Senate Republicans will try to fill the seat in an election year, after leaving Scalia’s seat open until 2017 when President Trump appointed and the GOP-controlled Senate confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch.

As the revered Barack Hussein Obama once chirped at Republicans, “elections have consequences.”

Did you ever know Demorats not to wield power when they had it? Hold back? Become remarkably circumspect, packed with good tidings, bipartisanship and compromise? Fuck no.

In a role reversal, do you possibly think they’d stop from filling the SCOTUS vacancy? Not on your damned life.

Also, the NationalReview.com wrote:

History Is on the Side of Republicans Filling a Supreme Court Vacancy in 2020

by Dan McLaughlin, 8-7-20

Choosing not to fill a vacancy would be a historically unprecedented act of unilateral disarmament.

If a Supreme Court vacancy opens up between now and the end of the year, Republicans should fill it. Given the vital importance of the Court to rank-and-file Republican voters and grassroots activists, particularly in the five-decade-long quest to overturn Roe v. Wade, it would be political suicide for Republicans to refrain from filling a vacancy unless some law or important traditional norm was against them. There is no such law and no such norm; those are all on their side. Choosing not to fill a vacancy would be a historically unprecedented act of unilateral disarmament. It has never happened once in all of American history. There is no chance that the Democrats, in the same position, would ever reciprocate, as their own history illustrates.

History supports Republicans filling the seat. Doing so would not be in any way inconsistent with Senate Republicans’ holding open the seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016. The reason is simple, and was explained by Mitch McConnell at the time. Historically, throughout American history, when their party controls the Senate, presidents get to fill Supreme Court vacancies at any time — even in a presidential election year, even in a lame-duck session after the election, even after defeat. Historically, when the opposite party controls the Senate, the Senate gets to block Supreme Court nominees sent up in a presidential election year, and hold the seat open for the winner. Both of those precedents are settled by experience as old as the republic. Republicans should not create a brand-new precedent to deviate from them.

I bet Biden wishes he hadn’t said this.

So: yes, President Trump did consult with the Senate. Check. And mate.

Does anyone remember what occurred with nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991?

Because, well, if you’re voting for Trump, “you ain’t black.”

“Come on, man!”

And as I said, let the threats commence. From the WashingtonExaminer.com:

‘Over our dead bodies’: Liberals threaten to ‘burn it all down’ if GOP replace Ginsburg before Election Day

by Andrew Mark Miller, 9-19-20

Former CNN host Reza Aslan joined several other verified Twitter accounts in threatening violence if Senate Republicans attempt to fill the Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“Over our dead bodies. Literally,” Aslan wrote in response to a tweet saying Sen. Mitch McConnell intends to fill Ginsberg’s seat, shortly after it was announced Friday that she had died at the age of 87.

Aslan also tweeted, “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire f—ing thing down.”

“If McConnell jams someone through, which he will, there will be riots,” Washington Post and GQ writer Laura Bassett said.

Director of Communications at the Anti-Violence Project Eliel Cruz agreed with Willimon’s calls to shut things down by calling on people to march on Washington and “just shut it down ourselves.”

Aaron Gouveia, author of a new book titled Raising Boys To Be Good Men: A Parent’s Guide to Bringing Up Happy Sons in a World Filled with Toxic Masculinity, responded to McConnell’s call to fill the vacant seat by tweeting, “F— no. Burn it all down.”

Writer and LGBT activist Charlotte Clymer opted not to wait until Republicans pushed a Ginsburg replacement through, deciding instead to head straight to McConnell’s home on Friday night.

“We’re now walking to Mitch McConnell’s house to protest,” Clymer said before tweeting out the intersection that McConnell allegedly lives on.

“His house is entirely dark,” she said later. “Significant police presence out front. It’s clear that he’s not here, as confirmed by a neighbor who is not fond of him. People are going home.”

Because that’s where the Demorat Party is these days.

McConnell received some support from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz, who agreed that a replacement should be voted on before the election, arguing that voters went to the polls in 2016 with the understanding they would likely be voting for the president who would fill Ginsburg’s seat.

“The president should next week nominate a successor to the court, and I think it is critical that the Senate takes up and confirms that successor before Election Day,” the Texas Republican said Friday night. “This nomination is why Donald Trump was elected.”

Then the standard Mark I, Model I JAFRs weighed in.

Several Senate Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Susan Collins, have made statements this year suggesting they would not support filling a SCOTUS vacancy this close to an election.

Democrats began vehemently opposing the move to fill the seat before the election immediately following Ginsburg’s death.

As indicated, there’s precedent.

There is historical precedent, as American Enterprise Institute fellow and former speechwriter for George W. Bush Marc Thiessen pointed out on Twitter, for Republicans to fill the seat so close to an election.

“*29 Presidents have had election year or lame duck vacancy -—all nominated someone,” Thiessen tweeted. “*8 x before election when other party controlled Senate — only 1 succeed. *10x before election when Pres and senate controlled by same party — 9 succeeded.”

Nancy Pelosi, of course, weighed in — in her preternaturally-cogent way.

But wait. The Demorats insisted a vacant SCOTUS seat be filled. At the end of Obama’s term. What changed?

But wait. Again. Didn’t Ruth Bader Ginsburg say something about this as well?

Here’s What RBG Said About Filling a SCOTUS Vacancy in an Election Year

by Matt Margolis, 9-19-20

As the debate over what to do about the vacancy on the Supreme Court is only getting started, perhaps we should heed the advice of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself as to what to do.

When a similar scenario occurred four years ago, following the death of Antonin Scalia, the Republican-controlled Senate blocked Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. It was a controversial move, and Ginsburg had something to say about it:  Ginsburg publicly called on the Senate to go through with the nomination.

“That’s their job,” she said in July 2016. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.”

“Eight is not a good number for a collegial body that sometimes disagrees,” Ginsburg said on the issue a few months later during an event at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was with her, agreed. “I think we hope there will be nine as quickly as possible.”

“What we do is we automatically affirm the decision of the court below. No opinion is written, no reasons are given, and the affirmance has no precedential value,” Ginsburg explained. “It’s just as though we denied review.”

There’s more. Here’s RBG from CNBC.com:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she opposes proposals from 2020 Democrats to expand the Supreme Court

by Tucker Higgins, 7-24-19

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she opposes proposals by Democratic presidential candidates to increase the number of seats on the Supreme Court because doing so would make it look partisan.

“It would be that — one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to,’” Ginsburg told NPR in an interview that aired Wednesday.

“Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time,” she said Tuesday.

Several Democratic candidates have said they are open to increasing the size of the nine-justice court.

Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke said shortly after entering the race that expanding the court to 15 members is an “idea we should explore.” Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has made court reform a centerpiece of his campaign, including the idea of court expansion. Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have said they are open to the idea.

But Ginsburg, the court’s most senior liberal justice, said the idea contradicts the premise of an independent judicial branch.

But guaranteed, very very guaranteed, you have NEVER heard of these stories or heard these audio cuts from the American Media Maggots. Purposely. You cannot afford to be actually informed or you begin to think clearly and independently.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz wrote:

Sen. Ted Cruz: After Ginsburg — 3 reasons why Senate must confirm her successor before Election Day

Here’s why President Trump must nominate a successor next week and why the Senate must confirm that successor before Election Day:

First, this nomination is why the American people elected Donald Trump as president and this confirmation is why the American people voted for a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.

Second, twenty-nine times in our nation’s history we’ve seen a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year or before an inauguration and in every instance, the president proceeded with a nomination.

And finally, as we approach what is likely to be a contested election that hangs in the balance of the Supreme Court, our nation is at risk of a constitutional crisis without nine justices on the bench.

Obama himself said in 2016:

Note how the UK Daily Mail portrays RBG’s death:

Trump is expected to ignore RBG’s dying wish and nominate her replacement in days while Biden demands he wait until after the election so the American people can decide

  •  It was the dying wish of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away Friday, that the next president nominate her replacement

  • Trump is set to ignore her and announce a nomination in the coming days

  • His rival Biden has already hit out and demanded he wait until after the election

  • Even if Trump does nominate in the next few days, a group of rebel GOP senators may stop it being approved 

  • Senators Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski are among those expected to oppose a vote 

As if death wishes or emotions take precedent over the US Constitution.

As it is, Demorats refuse to face the difficult truth: if Ruth Bader Ginsburg weren’t all taken by herself, and if the Demorats under Obama were playing tactically, she would have retired and Obama could have appointed her replacement quite easily.

But no. That was her decision. And their decision. No one hosed the Demorats but Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Demorats themselves.

At this point, it appears that Chuck Grassley and Mitt Romney have said they’ll vote in the Senate instead of refusing to vote.

Trump is expected to announce his nomination for SCOTUS this Friday or Saturday.

I suggest it may be Amy Coney Barrett.

And then next Tuesday? Will there be an actual debate between President Trump and Joe Biden? Will Joe suddenly be feeling poorly?

Time will tell.

BZ

 

 

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6 thoughts on “RBG: will the GOP Senate do the right thing?”

  1. What I hope McConnell and Lindsey Graham do is have a one day Judicial Committee meeting with an up and down vote, no hearings, and then McConnell have an immediate up and down full Senate vote.
    Won’t happen, but it should.

    • Thanking you ever so kindly RON.

      Have you happened to check out my radio show, every Tuesday and Thursday night, for two hours, at SHRMEDIA.COM?

      I start at 11 PM Eastern, 8 PM Pacific.

      You can watch on YouTube or Facebook on the SHR Media channel and page.

      You might like it sir.

      BZ

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